‘You must never want to leave Hartford,’ said Richard.
‘There are plenty of places, I am sure, that I might come to love as much. And places left may always be visited again,’ said Rachel.
‘Yes. You might always return to visit.’ After this, Richard Weekes seemed to sense that he had assumed too much. He looked down at his feet, shifting them slightly. ‘You grew up near here, you said?’
‘Yes. My family lived in the By Brook valley, not six miles from here. And I spent three seasons in Bath before… before my mother was taken from us.’ Before everything fell into pieces, she did not say.
‘Forgive me, I had no wish to summon sad memories.’
‘No, you did not – they are happy memories, Mr Weekes.’
After a pause, Richard cleared his throat quietly and continued.
‘I imagine you have some acquaintances then, in Bath and around? People you met during your seasons there?’
‘Some, I suppose,’ said Rachel awkwardly. He didn’t seem to understand that all such society had ceased with her father’s disgrace; she found that she had no particular wish to enlighten him. She had spoken of losing her parents, and he’d seemed to accept that as reason enough for her to have taken a post as governess, without any connotations of shame or penury. ‘But it has been a good many years since I was there.’
‘Oh, you will not have been forgotten, Miss Crofton. I am entirely convinced of that. It would not be possible to forget you,’ he said hurriedly.
‘A good many people come and go from the city,’ she demurred. ‘Did you grow up there yourself?’
‘No, indeed. I grew up out in the villages, as you did. My father was an ostler. But life in the city fits me far better. Bath suits me very well – I would not want to live anywhere else. Though there is sin and hardship there, of course, same as anywhere, and it’s more visible, perhaps, where so many people live in close quarters.’
‘Life can be cruel,’ Rachel murmured, unsure why he would mention such things.
‘Life, but also men. I once saw a man beating a small child – a starving, ragged boy no more than six years old. When I forestalled the man he told me that an apple had fallen from his cart, and that the child had filched it from the gutter. And for this he would beat the wretch with his stick.’ Richard shook his head, and gazed out into the sunshine, and Rachel waited. ‘In the end it came to blows. I fear I may have broken his jaw.’ He turned to look at her again. ‘Does that shock you? Are you appalled, Miss Crofton?’
‘Does what shock me? That a cruel man might beat a child over an apple, or that you might step in and punish him?’ she said severely. He tries so hard to make me know he is brave, and just, and sensible. Richard looked anxious, so she smiled. ‘The cruelty to the child was by far the worse evil, Mr Weekes.’
Richard took her hand then, and suddenly Rachel was all too aware of Eliza’s rigid back and listening ears, and the distant laughter of the other children. A breeze trembled through the beech leaves and fluttered a strand of hair against her cheek. Now it comes.
‘I have already told you how much I… admire you, Miss Crofton. How much I love you, as I have never loved another. You must marry me.’ Richard’s voice was so tense that this proposal came out as a clipped command, and his cheeks blazed with colour. He looked at his feet again, though he kept hold of her hand. It was almost like a bow, like supplication. ‘It would be an advantageous match, I do believe, for both of us. Your gentility and your manners are… so admirable, Miss Crofton. Your acquaintances in Bath… our combined resources, I mean… can only… can only lead to a shared future of far greater – I mean to say, please marry me, I beg of you.’ He coughed, regrouped. ‘If you would do me the great honour of being my wife, then I swear that I will devote my life to your every comfort and care.’ He was breathing deeply, looking up as if he hardly dared to. Two proposals, near a decade apart; this one somewhat the less graceful, but doubtless will be the last. Rachel did not feel certain, but the sky was the most brilliant blue, and his hand was as warm as his flushed cheeks, and his eyes were frantic as he waited for her answer to his clumsy words. The sun glanced from the sloping lines of his cheekbones and jaw. A beautiful face, and all coloured up for the love of me. She felt her heart swell, then, and crack open just a little bit; a glimmer of feeling that was unexpected, long absent, and brought tears to her eyes.
‘Yes. I will marry you, Mr Weekes,’ she said.
Rachel and Richard were to marry in the chapel next to Hartford Hall and then travel at once to Bath, to Richard’s house, where they would live.
‘What street is the house upon?’ Eliza pounced, when she heard of this plan.
‘I forget. Kingsgate, perhaps?’ said Rachel, inventing the name evasively. The house was in fact in Abbeygate Street, and her heart had sunk when she’d told this to the head nurse, Mina Cooper, and watched that kind woman trying to find something good to say about the address. I dare say it is much improved since I was there last.
‘Kingsgate? There is no Kingsgate that I know of. It can’t be near any of the better streets, if I haven’t heard of it at all.’
‘It is possible that there are things in this world that you don’t yet know of, Eliza.’ There were things, for example, that Rachel now knew about Richard that few others did. That in spite of his youthful looks, he was already past thirty. That his favourite thing to eat was bread dipped in the hot butter where mushrooms had been sauteed. That he was afraid to ride, having been thrown badly as a child. That though his father had been a lowly ostler, Richard had raised himself up through hard work and good taste and self-education, to become one of Bath’s most successful wine and spirits merchants.
All these things he told her, without her asking him; like a man laying himself bare – letting her know the good and the bad at once, so that she might know him completely, and it made her trust him. He didn’t seem to notice that he’d asked her little in return, or that she’d volunteered scant information about herself. And for each thing he told her, a dozen further questions were asked in a distant recess of her mind. This curious observer was subtle as a shadow; it was like the echo of a voice, coming up from a deep place; a part of herself she had somehow become separated from, in the years of loss and grief that had followed her happy childhood. But it was a voice she cherished; which, when heard, gave her a pang of loss that went deeper than flesh, and of joy at hearing it again, however softly. On the subject of Richard Weekes it was almost childlike, full of fascination, shy pleasure, and fleeting doubt.
Sir Arthur and Lady Trevelyan dutifully declared that they would miss Rachel, when she told them she would be leaving. She suspected that what they most regretted was having to advertise for a new governess. Only Frederick, the youngest child, seemed to genuinely grieve at the thought of losing her. When he threw his arms around her waist and buried his face in her skirt to hide his tears, Rachel was stabbed with regret.
‘You’re a good boy, Freddie, and I will miss you a great deal. I hope we will visit each other often,’ she told him.
‘I doubt that,’ Eliza chipped in. ‘Bath is so dull and… reduced, these days. We shall be travelling more often to Lyme from now on, I should think. And even if we did come to Bath, I dare say we would move in somewhat different circles.’ In her increased unkindness, Rachel read a touch of sorrow in Eliza, too. She feared that Eliza was one of those people who would only ever be able to express themselves through anger, so she found it in herself to cross over to the girl and kiss her cheek.